An independent research report by Navigant has concluded that Ford is the top car manufacturer creating driverless car tech. The American firm beat out a number of high-profile competitors, such as Volkswagen, GM, Tesla, Google and Renault and was ranked highest in terms of the strategy and execution of autonomous technology.

Slow and steady: WIRED takes a trip in Ford's self-driving car

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Human error is the number one cause of traffic accidents – congestion, injuries and fatalities. With developments in computational systems architecture and sensory technology, autonomous vehicles offer the possibility of dramatically reducing these accidents. Navigant's ratings could determine the company to watch in terms of finally bringing driverless vehicles into fruition.

Navigant's ratings are based upon 10 criteria, including go-to market strategy; production strategy; technology; product capability and staying power. These all help to determine the efficiency of strategy and execution employed by companies to make driverless tech a reality.

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Ford has been manufacturing cars for close to 113 years, and its investment in autonomous technology has been impressive. A fleet of Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicles has been in testing on tracks and public roads since 2013 and a host of other developments have attested to the company's plans for automation.

Ford is also a major stakeholder in Argo AI, a Pittsburg-based company aimed to develop and deploy the latest advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision. Over the next five years, Ford's investment in the firm is expected to top $1 billion (£800 million), in line with its plans to produce fully autonomous vehicles by 2021.

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Ford Motor Company

This plan, for 2021, focuses on using autonomous vehicles in mobility services, such as ride-sharing platforms. Ford's Smart Mobility LLC focuses on the commercialisation strategy and capability of vehicles in this process, including how the cars should be managed and operated.

The firm is not, by any means, the only one working on bringing self-driving technology to commercial situations. Uber, although hitting some speed bumps, has been testing its autonomous vehicles in California. Google's self-driving efforts, called Waymo, has been turned into a separate company and has completed millions of miles of testing on US roads – including carrying a legally blind passenger on a fully autonomous route. Meanwhile, Tesla's vehicles have been becoming increasingly autonomous with each version of its software updates.

For all the promise of autonomous tech, there are still significant challenges to the safety of autonomous vehicles. An autonomous car needs a virtual driver system (algorithmic software to track changes on the road) as well as an autonomous vehicle platform (all aspects of the physical car) to be in complete cohesion with each other. There must also be certain failsafes in place to ensure that if the steering fails, a human driver is able to re-take control of the car should the need arise.

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Chris Brewer, Chief Program Engineer, Autonomous Vehicle Development, Ford Motor Company, writes in a blog post that "the virtual driver system serves as the brains and the autonomous vehicle platform acts as the body" and that both need to be designed in a manner befitting a natural system. In an illustration produced by Ford, the autonomous car is designed somewhat like the human body, with a need to function as a whole unit, rather than separate pieces.

With the news that Ford had topped the Navigant leaderboard, Raj Nair, Executive Vice President of Ford, stated that "[Ford] certainly strive to be leaders in the self-driving revolution — leaders known for doing it right, putting our customers’ safety first, and building a strong business that enables this technology to serve their needs."

Whether autonomous vehicles are ready for the rigours of the road is a fact that remains to be seen. Technological developments such as LiDAR, camera and radar sensors, as well as the on-board computer that processes all the data, have yet to reach their full potential - but increased exploration into this field is advancing faster than ever and commercial usage of autonomous cars if firmly on the horizon.